us 0.1

UNKNOWN

A package for easily working with US and state metadata.

• all US states and territories

• abbreviations

• FIPS codes

• phonetic state name lookup

• URLs to shapefiles for state, census, congressional districts, counties, and census tracts

Congratulations, DC. As far as this package is concerned, you’ve got statehood.

Installation

As per usual:

pip install us

Features

Easy access to state information:

>>> import us
>>> us.states.MD
<State:Maryland>
>>> us.states.MD.fips
u'24'
>>> us.states.MD.name
u'Maryland'

Includes territories too:

>>> us.states.VI.name
u'Virgin Islands'
>>> us.states.VI.is_territory
True
>>> us.states.MD.is_territory
False

List of all (proper) states:

>>> us.states.STATES
[<State:Alabama>, <State:Alaska>, <State:Arizona>, <State:Arkansas>,...
>>> us.states.TERRITORIES
[<State:American Samoa>, <State:Guam>, <State:Northern Mariana Islands>,...

And the whole shebang, if you want it:

>>> us.states.STATES_AND_TERRITORIES
[<State:Alabama>, <State:Alaska>, <State:American Samoa>,...

For convenience, STATES, TERRITORIES, and STATES_AND_TERRITORIES can be access directly from the us module:

>>> us.states.STATES
[<State:Alabama>, <State:Alaska>, <State:Arizona>, <State:Arkansas>,...
>>> us.STATES
[<State:Alabama>, <State:Alaska>, <State:Arizona>, <State:Arkansas>,...

The state lookup method allows matching by FIPS code, abbreviation, and name:

>>> us.states.lookup('24')
<State:Maryland>
>>> us.states.lookup('MD')
<State:Maryland>
>>> us.states.lookup('md')
<State:Maryland>
>>> us.states.lookup('maryland')
<State:Maryland>

And for those days that you just can’t remember how to spell Mississippi, we’ve got phonetic name matching too:

>>> us.states.lookup('misisipi')
<State:Mississippi>

Shapefiles

You want shapefiles too? Gotcha covered.

>>> shpurls = us.states.MD.shapefile_urls()
>>> for region, url in shpurls.items():
...   print "%s: %s" % (region, url)
...
county: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/COUNTY/2010/tl_2010_24_county10.zip
state: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/STATE/2010/tl_2010_24_state10.zip
cd: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/CD/111/tl_2010_24_cd111.zip
zcta: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/ZCTA5/2010/tl_2010_24_zcta510.zip
tract: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/TRACT/2010/tl_2010_24_tract10.zip

The shapefile_urls() method on the State object generates shapefile URLs for the following regions:

• state

• county

• congressional district

• zcta

• census tract

If you know what region you want, you can explicitly request it:

>>> us.states.MD.shapefile_urls('county')
u'http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/COUNTY/2010/tl_2010_24_county10.zip'